Tuesday, 10 January 2017

During the winter months and it seems especially this
year, a lot of people are suffering with a niggling cough and so it’s a really
great idea to work on keeping your chest open so that your lungs can work as
well as possible to help keep them healthy.

Here are a few simple stretches and exercises that
you can do to help release tension around your shoulders and upper back and
create space in your chest area.

Breathing Exercise:

Place one
hand on the top of your chest and the other high on your abdomen. As you take
deep breath inwards you want the hand on your abdomen to move and not the hand
on your chest. This breathing exercise helps you to use your diaphragm more
when breathing and takes air deep into the bottom of your lungs. Increasing the
use of your diaphragm decreases the use of the muscles around the upper chest
and so reduces tension in the shoulders.

Pectoralis Stretch:

This
stretch helps to open up the chest and so allows your ability to breath deeply
to improve. The pectoral muscles (or pecs), are the large muscles of the chest
which we would associate with doing press-ups.

An easy
way to stretch this muscle is with the help of a door frame - you want to place
your elbow against the door frame so it is level with your shoulder (pic below)
- then take a step forward with the leg which is closest to the wall and as
your body moves forward you should feel the stretch in the chest, if you feel
the stretch more in your arm than your chest you may be twisting your body to
compensate for the step forward so make sure as you step forward you keep your
torso straight. If you can still feel more of a stretch in the arm rather than
the chest you can move closer to the door-frame.

The
picture below shows how to stretch the smaller pectoral muscle which is
underneath the larger one - this is the Pectoralis
Minor, to stretch it you need to lift your elbow slightly higher than your
shoulder and then repeat the stretch as before.

Note: If you feel a stretch in the Pectoralis as soon as you place your arm
against the door frame then you don't need to take the step forward, just feel
the stretch at the start point, as the muscle loosens you will be able to
stretch further.

Happy belly breathing and
chest-opening! Need a little more winter care you can book in with Hazel or any of the
Octagon team here.